“After all, he’s been turning out team after team of cocky, whitebread under-achievers for the last two decades, and it’s time someone showed him how the rest of the country feels about his brand of basketball.” — From a Craigslist post from someone looking for cheap tickets to the Wisconsin-Duke basketball game so he can moon Coach K. This looks like it could be my first Kickstarter project. [via my awesome baby brother]
Google is deprecating Gears in favor of HTML 5's offline storage support -
They’ll still support Gears so that things don’t break but fully expect developers to move towards HTML 5.
Microsoft is finally telling people to upgrade from IE 6 -
IE 8 is better than nothin’ I guess…
[video]
“Western Union has the skills and experience that uniquely qualify if for such a role; the public need for such a new utility is growing at a rapid rate; the field is already large and the potential tremendous - probably at least as large as any other national utility that exists today.” — From a memo written in 1965 outlining Western Union’s role as an “information utility company”. The whole thing is a fascinating read, both for its prescience and limited view of data as something scarce, something to be metered. Imagine if the internet worked like your power or water line. Imagine if Western Union had become Google. [via Nicholas Carr]
Congratulations, you two
It’s the big day and some of you out there are going to be carving a turkey, maybe even for the very first time. It can be a daunting task but the right method can make all the difference.
The New York Times put together a great video a few years ago about how to carve your turkey like a butcher, you should probably watch it a few times. Forget the cheesy Norman Rockwell paintings of some WASP-y patriarch carving the bird at the table, this is the way it should be done.
The best part of this carving method is that it cuts the breast across the grain of the meat, which helps to make it more tender. As any fellow Harold McGee devotee will tell you what we carnivores know as meat are the animal’s muscles, which are elongated fibers bundled together — you can see them as the “grain” of the meat. Those fibers work by contracting and relaxing (think about how your bicep works) which makes them surprisingly resilient lengthwise, especially to chewing. Separating groups of fibers is easier than breaking them apart, so cut your meat across the grain in order to chew it with the grain[1].
Regardless of how you choose to cut whatever you decide to eat for dinner, I hope you have a lovely Thanksgiving.
[1] I totally stole that line from McGee’s On Food and Cooking p. 129. You really should own this book if you’re interested in what actually happens when you cook food. I could read the egg chapter hundred times and learn something new every time.
Never forget
![The whole exchange that incorporates this chart really is wonderful [via Dave Shea]](http://6.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ktoqczrdat1qz4s19o1_500.gif)
The whole exchange that incorporates this chart really is wonderful [via Dave Shea]